This invention relates to a magnetic pump in which a driving force is transmitted to an impeller through the medium of a magnetic force.
FIG. 5 shows a conventional magnetic pump 10 and a photographic processing bath 12 to which the pump 10 has been applied. The pump 10 is constituted by a motor unit 21 and a pump unit 7. A rotor 9 and an output shaft 22 attached to the rotor 9 are rotated by the rotation of a stator 8 of the motor unit 21. In the pump unit 7, driving magnetic body 23 which is attached to the output shaft 22 rotates outside a non-magnetic partition wall 24 so that the driving force acts, as a magnetic force, on a driven magnetic body 27 which is attached to an impeller 26 accommodated in an impeller chamber 25, thereby rotating the impeller 26.
A processing liquid such as developer in the photographic processing bath 12 is drawn through an inlet 28 and is discharged from an outlet 6. In the pump 10, the motor unit 21 and the impeller chamber 25 are isolated from each other by the partition wall 24 so as to prevent any leak of the processing liquid from the impeller chamber and prevent seal packings 11 and 13 from being attacked by the developer or the like.
In the processing liquid, which is agitated by the pump 10 applied to the photography processing bath 12 in which a photosensitive medium 14 is transported by rollers 15, 16 and 18 while being immersed in the processing liquid or developer so as to effect development, it is necessary to interconnect the processing bath 12 and the pump 10 by an inlet pipe 19 and a discharge pipe 20.
The above-described type of magnetic pump is designed to separate the motor unit and the pump unit from each other, so that the number of parts and the size of the pump itself are large. In addition, a photography processing bath to which this type of pump is applied requires the provision of pipes for interconnecting the pump and the bath. The number of parts of this bath system is thereby increased and the piping thereof becomes complicated, resulting in an increase in the overall size of the bath system.